man of letters

Definitions

A literary man; a scholar or author.

dated

Equivalents

Examples

“This may be accounted for largely on the ground that Cicero and Petrarch were men of the same temperament and cast⟳ of mind⟳. They were both typical men of letters. The man of letters is intellectually alert; sensitive to impressions and able to report⟳ them; hospitable to all ideas of his time; […]”

“He was a pure man of letters, untimely born in a world that had no need⟳ of letters; […] he had abandoned his real calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.”

CEFR level